Peace Pedagogy: Exposing and Integrating Peace Education in Teacher Education.

Overview & Synopsis

This paper discusses peace education, which is "the transmission of knowledge about the requirements of, the obstacles to and possibilities for achieving and maintaining peace, training in skills for interpreting the knowledge, and development of reflective and participatory capacities for applying the knowledge to overcoming problems and achieving possibilities." The paper asserts that peace education needs exposure and further integration into teacher education discourse and practice. It begins defining peace education, explaining how the purposes and goals of peace education already align with peace theory, and suggesting how a move from implicit to explicit peace education may strengthen the overall momentum of peace pedagogy in building a culture of peace. The paper also surveys the scholarly literature pertaining to the integration of peace education into teacher education (noting that it has been excluded from mainstream teacher education rhetoric), and it reviews how peace education has been and can be further integrated into teacher education rhetoric and practice. It concludes by discussing approaches to peace education, a semantic field for peace education, and building a culture of peace through teacher education. (Contains 21 bibliographic references.) (SM)